Donald Trump wants to crush The Swamp. The leaks, the sneaks, and the secrets are all there. Our writers, David Gardner, Farrah Tomazin, and Sarah Ewall-Wice, are sifting through the ooze so you don’t have to. Don’t miss out.
In this week’s news from the ooze: Alexis Wilkins, Brooke Singman, Kimberly Guilfoyle, Nick Adams, Michelle Obama, Fancy James, Karoline Leavitt, Steve Bannon, Gavin Newsom, Mallory McMorrow, Guy Reschenthaler, Abdul El-Sayed, Melania Trump, Pope Francis, and Pope Leo.
Kash Patel’s Wedding Weekend With Country Singer Girlfriend Hits Sour Note
As the harrowing hunt for Savannah Guthrie’s mother entered its third week in Arizona, FBI director Keystone Kash Patel was 2500 miles away, living his best Hallmark Channel subplot in New York.
The MAGA acolyte spent Valentine’s Day weekend in the Big Apple with his country singer girlfriend Alexis Wilkins, attending the wedding of Pennsylvania Congressman Guy Reschenthaler and Fox News reporter Brooke Singman.
The couple met in October 2024 when Singman was covering the presidential election and Reschenthaler was campaigning for Donald Trump. The congressman filed for divorce from his then-wife, Jennifer, four months later.
Among those celebrating the nuptials at St Patrick’s Cathedral were failed Signal-user-turned U.N. ambassador Mike Walz, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, and her husband, Nicholas Riccio—a constellation of Trumpworld regulars who can’t resist a good wedding.
But Keystone Kash’s presence raised the most eyebrows: after all, the Guthrie probe has been plagued by fits and starts ever since 84-year-old Nancy Guthrie went missing earlier this month, with premature briefings, walk-backs, and public promises that haven’t aged well.
Last week, Patel himself even appeared on Fox News to talk about a “person of interest” being detained, only for that person to be released a few hours later.
Needless to say, the FBI director’s habit of teasing major developments before the facts are fully clear—along with his fondness for private jets—has left career officials exasperated. Indeed, even some MAGA diehards who once cheered his ascent as sweet revenge against the “deep state” have begun muttering that the theatrics are outpacing the results.
The irony, of course, is exquisite. As the FBI’s official channels posted over the weekend, warning lonely hearts not to be duped by online Romeos, their boss was posting in New York with his own plus-one, smiling for cameras.
For Keystone Kash, optics always come first. The hard part—competent, methodical law enforcement—can apparently wait until after the cake is cut.
Kimberly Guilfoyle and 12 Hungry Men
It must be hard for Kimberly Guilfoyle, 56, to be so far away while her ex-husband, Gavin Newsom, is fast becoming the (handsome) face of the opposition, and her old fiancé, Donald Trump Jr., is engaged to the much younger Bettina Anderson (39).
To date, Kimberly’s only regular escort appeared to be her stylist, Fancy James. But after her first 100 days as U.S. Ambassador to Greece, the single gal around Athens has clearly decided to do something about it.
There’s been no shortage of prominent Greeks lining up to do business with the former Fox News host since she arrived in a cloud of Eau de MAGA to represent her one-time father-in-law-to-be.
The Swamp hears that the amorous ambassador set up a lunch date with 12 of Greece’s richest and most powerful men. The only other stipulation she gave to the organizers was that they should all be men. No news yet on who stayed for dessert…
Sucking Up and the Art of Waiting Patiently
Nick Adams, the self-styled “alpha male” who once declared his love for Hooters wings and Western civilization in the same breath, is still waiting by the phone.
Seven months after Donald Trump tapped the MAGA influencer to serve as ambassador to Malaysia, Adams’ nomination is yet to be confirmed.
In fact, congressional documents reviewed by the Swamp show that the Senate sent the nomination back to the president on Jan. 3 under “Senate Rule XXXI, Paragraph 6.” That’s a procedural rule that effectively deems the nomination dead. To revive it, the White House would either have to renominate Adams, thereby restarting the committee and confirmation process, or select someone else for Malaysia’s top diplomatic role.
In the meantime, Adams has devoted himself to full-time flattery. Note his X feed over the past two days alone: “Trump Golf is one of the most successful companies in the world!” read one tragic post. “President Trump has the perfect economy,” gushed another. He even offered relationship advice, urging Americans to follow the example of Trump and Melania Trump—and “not the fake marriages of convenience like Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama and Michelle Obama.”
,
“Donald Trump is the spiritual father of our country. We would be lost without his strong moral and biblical leadership!” he declared, alongside a photo of Trump dressed in white while holding a bible.
Adams, an Australian-born conservative commentator who became a U.S. citizen in 2021, has long courted controversy. He previously served as a local councilor in Sydney before reinventing himself as a MAGA media personality, building a brand around hyper-masculinity, culture-war broadsides, and relentless Trump devotion. For now, though, Malaysia waits. And Adams posts.
Bannon’s Populist “Gladiator School”
New scrutiny from the Epstein files has revived interest in Steve Bannon’s international networking and ideological projects—including how he courted wealthy patrons while waging war against the Vatican.
For a MAGA acolyte who styles himself as a populist wrecking ball, it turns out that Bannon has long harbored distinctly Old World ambitions.
In 2017, the then-Trump strategist attached himself to a plan to transform the 13th-century Certosa di Trisulti, a monastery perched in the hills southeast of Rome, into a kind of nationalist “gladiator school” for the global right. The project was spearheaded by the Dignitatis Humanae Institute, which secured a lease from the Italian government. Bannon didn’t buy the monastery outright, but became its most famous evangelist, promising to build an academy to train culture warriors in the shadow of the Vatican. However, the plan collapsed after Italian authorities revoked the lease, citing irregularities in the bidding process and unpaid fees.
Still, the episode neatly captures Bannon’s long-running fixation on Rome—and his not-so-subtle disdain for Pope Francis.
“His greatest failings outside the spiritual and theological are siding with the globalist elites against the citizens of the nations of the world,” Bannon once said of Francis. That was around the same time he told his pal Jeffrey Epstein he wanted to “take out” the Holy Father. You can’t help but wonder what he thinks of Pope Leo.
Gloves off in Battleground Michigan
The race to replace Michigan Senator Gary Peters is quickly turning into a test of how Democrats navigate immigration politics in a purple state. This week, the glare was on state Senator Mallory McMorrow, who is vying for the open seat against U.S. Congresswoman Haley Stevens and former health officer Abdul El-Sayed. McMorrow has been courting progressive voters while recently appearing at an anti-ICE rally but critics say the optics don’t match her record. In 2020, she voted for a state budget that stripped money from certain sanctuary city policies, blocked undocumented immigrants from receiving certain public benefits, and instituted E-Verify requirements aimed at keeping undocumented people out of the workforce. Three years later, she opposed amendments in Michigan that would have increased oversight of prisons and detention facilities receiving state funds, including measures to allow lawmakers to inspect facilities without 72 hours’ notice and to require body cameras for corrections officers. And according to El-Sayed, attending an anti-ICE protest doesn’t go far enough - he reckons the agency should be “abolished” entirely. Still, a recent Emerson College poll shows McMorrow slightly ahead at roughly 22 percent of the vote. Stevens was close behind at about 17 percent, and El-Sayed at around 16 percent, but roughly 38 percent of voters were undecided, underscoring how open this August primary remains. Meanwhile, Trump’s Republicans are watching closely, seeing a fractured Democratic field as a rare pickup opportunity in 2026.
Live Free or Die in 2028
Pete Buttigieg is headed up to Manchester, New Hampshire, on Thursday to campaign for Senate hopeful Chris Pappas, but how could we not spot a potential ulterior motive here? After all, the state has long held first-in-the-nation presidential primary status, so helping out a fellow Democrat there now goes a long way for a likely 2028 hopeful two years down the road.
